Monster
by Lithos Maitreya
Summary: Geralt's seen some weird things in his time. Three of the weirdest have a question for him.
**A/N: Wrote this in two hours last night to take my mind off some problems. Geralt's probably out of character. Sorry; he's damn hard.**

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 _Monster_

Geralt blinked as his eyes were stabbed by the sharp sunlight. The mist behind him seemed to dissipate into nothingness.

Where was he? He was on a cliff of some kind, and behind him was the mouth of a cave, but he had entered no cave nor passed through one. Before him was a varied landscape; a strange, glittering city with buildings that seemed to touch the sky dominated the right side of his sight, while his left was ruled by a great mountain that towered over even these pillars. Between them was an overgrown forest, which gave way to a sandy beach on the shore of the ocean. The sun was rising out of the water, and both the orb and its reflection lanced into his sensitive eyes.

On the edge of the cliff were three figures. They sat facing away from him, looking into the dawn. He could only make out vague details from their silhouettes, rendered obscure by the light in his eyes.

On the right was something Geralt had seen before, many times: a human skeleton, the bone of its polished skull glistening even in the bright, all-encompassing sunrise. Whoever it had belonged to had, Geralt assumed, died in the strange bulky coat if wore.

Then he realized it was moving slightly. It was alive… or at least animate.

In the middle was a human child… or at least, Geralt corrected himself carefully, what _looked_ like a human child. It was at the young age of ten or eleven where sex was difficult to determine, and its loose, striped tunic did nothing to help Geralt in the determination.

On the left was a flower in a pot. It moved slightly from side to side, though there was no breeze.

Geralt reached behind him, fingering his silver sword. In his experience, strange and eerie things tended to go only one way.

"There's no need for that," said a deep voice, sounding slightly muffled, as if by a head cold. The skeleton turned its head and looked at him, a white light flickering in its eyes. "We just wanted to talk," it said, though its mouth didn't move.

Geralt didn't take his hand off the blade. "What are you?" he asked.

The skeleton chuckled. "Well…" he said, "that's kinda why you're here, isn't it? To decide."

"You're a professional," said another voice, high and merry, and the flower turned to him now, a white face embedded in the middle of the golden petals. It gave him a friendly smile. "A monster hunter, right? A Witcher."

Geralt nodded slowly. "You have a job for me?" he asked, trying not to sound too skeptical. Normally it was things like these he was asked to hunt.

"Not in so many words," said a third voice, low and young, and the child's head came around to its right and faced him, dark eyes looking up at him from under heavy brows. "We just want something answered."

The child turned back to the sun and kept going until it was facing him over its other shoulder, nbut now its visible eyes was a luminous, vicious red. "We want to know," a new, cold, cruel voice asked from the child's mouth, "which of us is the monster."

Geralt was silent for a moment. "At this point," he said grimly, "I'm guessing all of you."

The skeleton chuckled. It was a surprisingly human sound. "You haven't heard the stories yet," he said. "Wait, and then judge."

"First," Geralt said coldly, "where the hell am I?"

"Outside Mount Ebott," said the flower. "You're nowhere near your homeland, I'm afraid—or even your home world."

Geralt narrowed his eyes. "Who brought me here?" he demanded. "One of you?"

"No," said the vicious voice of the child. "We were told to meet you here. Something else just wants to know you, I think."

Its head came around and the child spoke again. "They said to tell you you'll be taken back to Skellige just as you left," they said. "That's about all we know."

Geralt nodded. "Fine, fair enough," he said. "That's too stupid a story to be a lie." He knelt in a meditative position. "Go on, then," he said resignedly. "Tell me a story."

The skeleton began. "I'm a monster," he said. "It's what we call ourselves. I watched something that wasn't a monster kill my brother, my friends, and everyone else I'd ever known or even cared about. I didn't stop them. I was too slow to make myself act. I only stepped in after it was too late to save anything worth saving. And then, when I finally did act, I killed a little child in cold blood after they begged me for mercy."

Geralt nodded slowly. "And you want to know whether all that makes you a monster," he said.

The skeleton nodded. "But hear the others out first," he said.

The child's head looked over its right shoulder as it spoke. "I'm a human," they said, "who doesn't want to kill anyone. I refused to fight even as people who could be my friends tore my body to shreds and ripped my soul apart. And yet, inside me…"

The child's head whipped around to the other shoulder and continued in the other voice. "…Is me. I'm a human who wants to kill everyone. I killed my mother, and my father. I killed people who had faith in me, and people who didn't have faith in me I killed my friends, and their friends, and people I didn't even know. I used to love someone, but when they refused to kill and died for the refusal I hated them and everyone else for it."

Geralt watched the child for a moment. "You know how many people you killed?" he asked.

The child—no, the thing inside the child—actually laughed. "All of them," it said, matter-of-factly.

Geralt nodded. "All right," he said. "Your turn," he told the flower.

It nodded on its stem. "I used to be a monster," it said, "but I died and was brought back without a soul as a flower. I couldn't feel, couldn't love, couldn't hate. I could only want and take. So I did. I took food, I took lives, I took time, and eventually I even took souls. Inside me there was a memory of a little boy who just wanted to grow up happy with his sibling, and eventually a little child who loved everything made me remember that."

Geralt nodded. "That it?" he asked.

The three figures nodded as one.

"Then I have a few questions," he said then, "because some of this doesn't add up. First," he turned to the skeleton. "The child," he asked. "Why did you kill them?"

"Because they killed my brother," the skeleton said. "I mean, they killed everyone else too, but that didn't matter. My brother was the only one who mattered."

Geralt hummed. "Do you have an excuse for killing them after they asked for mercy?" he asked.

"No." The word was firm and final.

Geralt turned to the flower. "And you," he said. "You said you couldn't feel, but then how could you want?"

"I wanted to feel," said the flower. "I wanted to remember what it was like to feel something. There's a rush in killing people that has nothing to do with feeling. You get stronger every time you kill someone, and getting stronger is good whether or not you can feel anything."

"And what did you do," Geralt asked, "when you remembered the little boy?"

"For just a minute," the flower said, "I could feel again. I knew it wouldn't last, but it was enough. I loved the child who showed me that—loved them more than I loved anything else, loved them so hard I knew I would remember it after I stopped feeling again. I haven't killed anyone since."

Geralt nodded. The sun had risen properly now and he could better make out the features of the child in the daylight. Their hair was brown and reached down to their shoulders, but the profile Geralt saw as the child looked over its right shoulder was quite expressionless and had no noteworthy features. Geralt doubted he would recognize this particular child if he saw them again tomorrow. "You," he said to them. "Are you the child he killed?" he nodded at the skeleton.

The child nodded mutely.

"Are you the one who killed everyone he knew?" he asked then.

The child nodded again.

"Are you the child who reminded him what it was like to feel?" Geralt nodded at the flower.

The child gave him another nod.

"Are there two of you?"

The child hesitated, then shook its head slowly.

Geralt stood up. "You're all probably monsters," he said. "So am I. Welcome to the club."

There was a moment's silence. Then the skeleton and the child stood up. The flower, of course, lacked legs.

"Thank you," said the child. "That's what we wanted to know."

A mist gathered at the edges of Geralt's vision. He turned. The mouth of the cave was brimming with the same mist he had walked out of earlier.

"I assume that'll lead to your next destination," said the flower's voice. "Good-bye, Geralt of Rivia."

Geralt turned back to them. "I'd ask your names," he said shortly, "but I doubt I want to know any of you well enough. See you around."

"Hopefully not," came the child's more vicious voice from behind him. "For your sake."

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 **A/N: As with all my works, reviews are appreciated but unnecessary. Might continue a series of crossovers where Geralt judges characters like this. After all, when you hunt monsters for a living, you get very good at telling the people from the monsters.**


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